Winsted: Flood Trauma

Bruce PrattEddington, Maine

I was four. I was standing with my father on the porch of our apartment on the first floor on Union Street in Winsted.

I wore my new jacket with the baseball bat and glove on the chest. My father and I were Yankee fans, my Uncle Kenny and my grandfather rooted for the Red Sox. Summer had gone cold and my legs were goose-fleshed. I had new, blue, low top Keds and khaki shorts.

If the water got higher we might have to go up to Highland Lake where my grandparents and their horses Nippy and Susie lived. My grandfather had a garden and smoked cigars and like Budweiser beer because he knew someone named Gussie.

It rained all day and I couldn't leave the house or the porch. My brother stayed inside with my mother and my father wondered if the brook behind his store in Collinsville might flood.

Just before I went to bed a dam broke. Main Street became a river. A house fell and I saw something fall and my mother screamed that it was a man. It kept raining, and when it stopped a National Guard man carried me up the long hill to the roller rink, where I got a shot that made me sick. My mother carried my brother. I drank Coke and cried on my grandmother's couch.

It was cold, no electricity. My father stayed at the house for awhile in case thieves came, but later he tried to drive his old army jeep to bring food to people and to check on his store. My uncle had an accident in the spillway and broke his arm. He was back from Korea. All the adults were sad.

The governor, Mr. Ribicoff came on the radio and promised that we would be all right. My father's store was OK. I've been a Democrat ever since.

When I grew up I wrote a song about the flood called, "The Farmington." It started out as a joke because a guy on TV said that on the 30th anniversary of the flood that some of the survivors might have "Flood Trauma."

I drove up to the overlook between East and West Hartland and the river was a tiny, sinuous, drought-ravaged ribbon. But I have flood trauma, a searing unease when floods are imminent. I can feel the clammy cool of that long ago August, and see the river rise and the detritus storm by on the swollen torrent. I remember the screams most of all.

I haven't sung the song since I stopped performing, but the sound of rushing water always calls it to mind.